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Paul Woolcock edited this page Mar 19, 2019 · 38 revisions
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Known Issues

Why isn't it finding any Outlook calendar items?

This is normally due to being in a non UK or US timezone which may use a less common date-time format. Try experimenting with different date formats under Settings > Outlook > Regional Date Formats or even custom date formats such as dd-MMM-yyyy HH:mm.

📝 Normally including seconds and/or AM/PM make things worse, but worth experimenting with everything!

Then click the Test button to check the expected number of items are now returned. If the test is returning items but the sync is not, check the Outlook category filter to make sure you aren't inadvertently filtering everything out!

If it still doesn't work, check if you have an "Archive" folder configured in Outlook (this happens when you open a .pst file) - it might be that OGCS is syncing with a calendar folder inside here. If so, temporarily close the archive, configure OGCS against the main account calendar and then reopen the archive.

Why can't I sync more than 1 year past or future?

This is often a misunderstanding of what OGCS will sync. If there are recurring appointments that span the date range being synced, then the whole recurring series will be synced. So, for example, a series that started 20 years ago and has no end date would still be synced. The only caveats are that:

  1. if the recurring series has an exception that falls outside of the synced date range, these will not be included; and
  2. if the recurring series repeats annually, then the month it occurs must fall within the synced date range

If you are looking to sync years and years of calendar, then more likely a one off manual export to .ics and import is what you're after.

What does the "Merge with existing entries" option do?

This will preserve calendar events that were not created by this tool, or are not related to the content you are syncing, you can select this option to stop the tool deleting them.

However, it's recommended to sync to a dedicated calendar (contains no other items) if at all possible.

Why am I getting duplicates created?

This may be because you have migrated from a different tool to this one, or used an earlier version of it which had a known issue with recurrent events. Please ensure you have Disable deletions unchecked. If you have Merge with existing entries checked, then only items that you have deleted in the source calendar (eg Outlook) will be deleted in the target calendar (e.g. Google).

Why are my meeting attendees getting notified of updates to Events in Google?!

Unfortunately, this is nothing OGCS is doing, but several reports of it have been made. It would appear from several similar postings on Google's forums (here and here), that this was an issue that plagued it's own original calendar sync tool...but was never resolved.

In response to this, from v2.6.2, by default OGCS will append ".ogcs" to the email address of the meeting attendees. By "cloaking" the real email address in this way, if Google does attempt to send out unsolicited email, it will be undeliverable.

Of course, you could also completely turn off synchronisation of attendees in the settings of OGCS.

📌 If you were syncing attendees prior to v2.6.2 and wish to now cloak them, it is recommended to force this change for all you events by pressing the Shift key whilst clicking the Sync button.

⚠️ If you delete an event with uncloaked attendees through your mobile Calendar app, this will also automatically notify the attendees! This is not something OGCS has control over.

Why am I the meeting organiser for all events?

Even though you may not be the organiser in source calendar, you will find you are the meeting organiser in the target calendar. This is a limitation of the Google API - the organiser must be the person who created the event (which is you through OGCS).

How do I wipe/reset the configuration?

If you wish to reset your configuration, so you can start the application as though it's a fresh install:-

  1. Click the Settings tab, and then Application Behaviour
  2. Click the Open Log button (this will open Windows Explorer)
  3. Close OGCS
  4. In the Windows Explorer window, select the settings.xml file and delete or rename it.
  5. Restart OGCS

Known Issues

Why Won't OGCS Upgrade? I Know There's a Later Version Released!

If you are running a version of OGCS prior to v2.7.4.0, unfortunately GitHub made a change that broke the upgrade mechanism. You will need to manually download at least v2.7.4 for the upgrade process to work again.

"Page cannot be displayed" After Authorising OGCS To Access My Calendar

This may happen if you have Google Chrome as your default browser and have previously accessed a website on https://localhost - something web developers or people in IT may do. To resolve this, there are several options available:

  • Change the start of the URL from https:// to http://
  • Perform a hard refresh by pressing
    • Ctrl+F5, or
    • F12 and then right-click the refresh button and Hard Reload or Empty Cache and Hard Reload
  • At the start of the authorisation process, copy the URL out to
    • an Incognito Chrome window (Ctrl+Shift+N)
    • a different browser

Usage Limits Exceeded

Although Google do impose usage limits, there appears to be a bug related to events with multiple recipients with different email address domains. Therefore, if you are continually hitting this problem, try unchecking the sync attendees option.

Unable to add new entries into the Google Calendar. The following error occurred:
Google.Apis.Requests.RequestError
Calendar usage limits exceeded. [403](403)
Errors [
Message[Calendar usage limits exceeded.](Calendar-usage-limits-exceeded.) Location[ - ](---)  
Reason[quotaExceeded](quotaExceeded) Domain[usageLimits](usageLimits)

Anti-Virus False Positives

🌟 As of v2.7.3 OGCS executable files are now code-signed which, over time,
will help anti-virus software to trust it and thus render the following information obsolete 🌟

Some AV software may falsely report OGCS as a virus. This is likely due to OGCS accessing the Outlook address book to determine the email address of meeting attendees, which is required in order to sync them.

This being a spare-time project, there's no way I can submit every release of OGCS to every over-zealous AV vendor - support from the user community in doing so would be greatly appreciated 👍

False positive reporting links for some well known AV vendors:-

Windows Defender SmartScreen Protected Your PC

This is normally the Windows 10 Edge browser marking files that are downloaded from the internet (especially executable files) as blocked by default. To unblock your OGCS download:

  1. For Setup.exe right-click the file and select Properties
  2. In the bottom right hand corner, click the Unblock button.
  3. Execute Setup.exe

If you are wanting to use the portable zip release, either double-click the Windows Defender SmartScreen Unblock.ps1 file or follow these steps manually:

  1. Winkey+R and type powershell
  2. Change directory to the extracted files cd C:\my\extracted\files\directory
  3. Get-ChildItem | Unblock-File
  4. Now run OGCS by double clicking the executable.

Old Events Not Observing Daylight Saving

As per Issue 239, it appears Outlook may not recalculate the new time properly. In this case, you need to re-open the problematic appointment(s), change the start time, change it back and then save it.

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